Archive for November, 2009

Product Focus A Good Thing?

I am sure you have heard it all…..

Find your niche, focus on your niche, target your niche………

This is all well and good if you know how to optimize your pages and target your keywords in the search engines. Only completely focus on the product if it is totally yours! The sorry fact is…. to get customers or readers to your "niche", you will have to dominate highly searched terms targeting that niche. Unless you are a professional SEO webmaster and key phrase expert researcher, chances are you will see very little traffic to your "niche site". Yup! All those Guru programs, niche builders, and software won't do a thing for you unless you happen to be lucky just before the lightning strikes you!

Ask any Guru…. They will tell you it is a numbers game! They know 99% of new members/affiliates/downlines are going to fail and exit the program withing 3 months! They need the new signups to keep that initial purchase money coming. Most offer signup bonuses also so the Guru's can earn extra before their downlines figure out they can not keep losing money! It is the numbers! If you are not getting thousands of hits a day with your websites or have hundreds of thousands of emails in your lists. How do you think you are going to make it? People do not automatically go to your replicated website just because your name is on it! Unless your name dominates the top search engine pages!

Joining and promoting any make money online product or program will only benefit the product owners. You may make a few bucks….. You probably spend more!

So How Do I Make Money Online?

Along with the rest of the gobelty goop they feed you most do have some correct information in their marketing information. Your new online business is a business and should be treated like one!

Sure back in the 90's Joe Shmoe could put a page up online and probably make a lot of money. Now almost every key phrase has millions competing for search engine position. You have to be good to beat that competition!  Joe Shmoe might as well buy a lotto ticket…..

The best way to get targeted customers online is by using the search engines because when someone searches for "your product", if you are #1 on the search engine for "YOUR PRODUCT" they will click on your link. As you see the best way is not an easy way. Thus product focus should not be your #1 priority unless it is your product.

Building your business online is now the same as building one in your town. To get customers you need to gain their trust by giving them good information, products, and service. Hype and lies may catch their attention for a second, but  as soon as they see through it, they are gone and your online reputation is shot.

It still is not really that hard but does take some time, your total commitment to make your business work, and a plan to follow so your business builds in an orderly fashion making it easier and easier to find by new customers.

Your main business focus should be what you know best, how you learned it, and why what you do is better for your customers than all that other stuff online. Your potential customers have to know and trust you! Don't try to become something you aren't because you have a new product page. Think about it! Do you buy online from Joe Shmoe? Do you even buy online? You have to prove to your potential customers you are the most trustworthy person on the web to buy your products from before they click that Google ad (that you will make 3 cents from) to buy from someone else!

Traffic Blog Network Updates 11/09

A note from Blog HQ.

The Blog network has been upgraded to WPMU 2.8.6.
WP link directory plugin lost functionality with this upgrade. All other plugins seem to be working fine.
To check your blog plugins or to see what other features you might want to add to your blog, simply scroll down and expand or click on the plugin tab in your blog Admin section. A list of available plugins will show with active ones showing a disable link. To activate more, just click activate. some may need more information and set up by you, just follow the instruction on the next page….

If Your Blog has disappeared!……

Try using a valid or one of your main email addresses…
Do not copy and paste word or other word processing files into your blog unless you use the paste from word or paste as plain text buttons in your post editor. Not using these buttons leaves extra code visible to readers and dead links. It looks like crap and does not link to any of your other sites or affiliates! It will cause Blog deletion!

The upgraded software should help capture some of the splogs before creation. I will catch the rest shortly!
Our blog network was created to build its members traffic and web presence with their quality content. I will uphold quality standards to help push members content to the top of every search engine! Spam and Splogs will keep getting deleted!

New advertising plugin for all members!

WP 125 will allow 125 x 125 ads or banners in your sidebar! Activate the wp125 on the plugin page and a wp125 tab should show up at the bottom of your admin menu. Click it to edit your setting and add or edit ads.

I know most of you probably think your TBN blog will never get you more traffic because you haven't seen much yet. People…. I have with the help early on of a few friends built our traffic rank to a peak a couple months ago of 224,000 out of every page on the web! That means we were only getting less traffic than 224,000 web pages on the entire world wide web! That figures out to just under half a million hits the early part of Oct! The traffic started dropping back the last 2 weeks of OCT. WE usually average from 200,000 – 300,000 hits a month and do you know why you haven't seen many? Because the main blog has been bringing in most of them! Holly, Jeannie, & Steven lead in the rest.

If you have been getting hits but no sales, you have either targeted your tags incorrectly or your copy does not draw your readers to your action (join or purchase). Also be sure that most links away from your blog are your own leading to another program for them to join or a product they can buy, do not overload your pages with ads and links! Your main purpose is to grab their interest and make them want to come back again!

The search engines are going to keep getting pickier on the content and pages they rank highly. Interesting, original copy on your blog will bring you closer to the top with every search.

Happy blogging!
Scott Reynolds
Trafficblognet.com Admin

Ad Advertising to Your Blog

The Traffic Blog Network has added an advertising plugin to our list of member comforts.

You will be able to easily add your own product ads, sell advertising on your blog, track the ads, and much more with this simple to use plugin.

Turn it on the same as you do other Wordpress Plugins. Click the Plugins tab in your admin area then scroll down through the list of availble plugins to find WP125 and activate it. (click link under WP125)

Then easily configure from the ADS links in your main back office menu.

Be sure to only use 125 x 125 banners or images or your image may not show.

The banner or image must be uploaded to the web and you will need the URL (web address) to enter in the image box. Most affiliate banners already have an image location. The URL will be in between " " like this <img src="http://yoursite.com/image/mybanner"> in the banner code. The other link in the code similar to this <a href="http://yoursite.com/?=affid165348"> has your affiliate link between the " ". This will be what goes in the other link  box.

You can set your link to any website you want the people that click the image to go to. Any 125 x 125 image can be added as long as you know the web address or URL.

Adding an Image of your own from your computer is as easy as adding an image to your post. Do a post about your product and add the image in the post using the image button in the editor. Once the post is saved you can just right click the image and either copy image location, or view image then copy from your browser address bar. You now have the image URL to add to your ad plugin page.

Post comments here with questions or problems or use the live help. I have been doing this for years and it is easy for me now. I do still remember how hard it was for me to figure out what part of what code went where to make things work back when I started….. I will be glad to help members get started.

Remember that every outside link you add to your blog is another opportunity for your hard earned visitor to click away from your blog and maybe never find you again! Make sure your ads and outgoing  links are pointing to your stuff, or can make you enough money to overcome loosing a visitor. It may be as easy as hitting the back button to come back and sign up to your blog or RSS feed, but can you afford to take that risk?

Spam Free Network?

For those of you that lost your blogs……. Where did you learn to write?

No I am not one of those people that will allow total crap and spam on my blog network just because it is content or traffic. I have been lax in the splog removal the last few months and was actually hoping the spam protection would hold most spammers off. They gradually work their way back in and I have to delete their blogs and block their domains. ……

Do they really hurt a site like ours? YES!!!

I have mentioned before about the time I have to devote to spam cleaning and our traffic taking dips as the spamming increases. Well this time I was really excited about our traffic rank climbing towards the top 200,000 on the web and was watching the traffic stats closely. Our traffic did take a dip in early September but then held fairly steady through October. Our Alexa Rank has dropped almost 100,000 in the last 3 weeks with actual traffic picking up. Why? I am not totally sure but blame the crapy content posted by the splogs…. I removed most of it last week and traffic rank immediatly started back up! I had a few minutes tonight to check and delete the rest of the spam blogs or splogs.. I will be watching the traffic stats and our rank closely to be sure if this was actually the cause or not.

I always stress the importance of origanal content! This will also help brand you as your web presence grows!

I hope that I am really seeing search engines picking up on the spammers and cheaters allowing the real articles to be seen????

At any rate…. this blog network will stay as splog free as my time allows with top quallity content from all members pushing everyone of your posts to the top of searches all over the web!

Why The WordPress Platform?

Many people think Wordpress blogs are to complecated in the back office or Admin area.

Compared to most …. they are more complicated. But there is a reason!

Wordpress blogs have made getting seen on the internet easy for a lot of people the last few years.  The reason? The many ways to personalize your blog to your needs. A Wordpress blog can be use for just about anything now, including a membership site and never leaves the arena of easily posting lots of great content very easily that already has basic seo built in. The area of seo is ever changing  so there are always tweeks to be made by the pros to get the "edge" but a basic WordPress blog will do you well without doing any more than posting interesting content on a regular basis!

So…… too complicated?

I don't think so! If you can log in and click the add new post button you will do ok! Starting out by just posting is easy, going to Appearance to select a theme that fitts your style is as easy as clicking a few buttons! The hard part is deciding which one you like the best! Just go to one area at a time and browse around, see what each section is for. Don't push yourself and get lost! Learn at your own pace and you will be doing things you never would have thought you could in no time!
 WordPress has tons of instruction and even videos to help you do anything you want with your blog. All one has to do is ask! Traffic  Blog Net Owner Scott Reynolds is happy to work with anyone having a hard time with their WordPress Blog. On TBN, Support can change or repair anything you may think you messed up without any hassle! Some sites will take 3 to 4 emails to get things right. TBN uses Live Help and Skype to keep support fast and more personal.

Sure … you can use the other blog platforms that seem easier….. But will anyone see your posts but you?

I want to help you! But to do that I need you to see my posts. That is why I use WordPress and why I started my own blog network….. I can be seen by you…. then help you be seen with a TBN blog.